Earlier than ever
before, at least in modern times, five signature drives have been completed
and petitions have been pulled from the streets a year ahead of the deadline.
In fact, signatures for four of the five measures have already been submitted
to the Secretary of State for verification.

The four submitted
measures are measures to: 1) Make federal income taxes fully deductible
on individual state tax returns; 2) Require that immigrant students be
immersed in English, rather than be sidetracked into six year bilingual
education programs that focus first on making them more proficient in
their native language; 3) Require that teacher pay raises and job security
be based on classroom performance, not teacher seniority; and 4) Require
mandatory sentences for such property crimes as burglary, car theft, identity
theft, and meth dealing.

The first three of
these measures are mine. The property crime measure is a Kevin Mannix
measure.

Another of my measures,
which is also finished but has not yet been submitted to the Secretary
of State, allows a homeowner or a farmer to make $35,000 worth of improvements
to their property per year without a building permit. The measure requires
that all such improvements be disclosed fully to prospective buyers; doesn�t
allow a new house to be built without a building permit; doesn�t allow
adding a second story without a permit; and requires that electrical work
done without a permit be signed off by a licensed electrical contractor.

I am still collecting
signatures on another measure that prohibits the use of public resources,
including the public payroll system, to collect political funds. One of
the effects of that measure would be to stop public employee unions from
collecting political funds via the public payroll system. This measure
is similar to one of the measures for which the teachers unions have been
suing me and Oregon Taxpayers United for the past seven years. The appeal
from that ongoing case will be heard by the Oregon Supreme Court in September
(2007).

(FYI: After handling
that case for three years, the Multnomah County judge who presided over
it confessed that his son was a member and activist in the same union
that was suing in his court and in fact had been elected as a union president.
Multnomah County Judge Jerome LaBarre made several heavily reported disparaging
remarks about me, while deceitfully concealing his obvious conflict of
interest in the case.)

Moving on, I am not
yet finished with the measures I plan on placing on the 2008 ballot. We
just hit the streets with a new measure that requires a three-fourths
vote of both the Oregon House and Senate to declare an emergency. State
Senator Larry George joins me as a chief petitioner on this measure. Fake
emergency clauses are often used by the state legislature to keep
an unpopular legislative bill from being referred to the voters via a
referendum petition.

This past session,
Democrats attached an emergency clause to a bill mandating heavily biased
and deceitful ballot descriptions for a measure that would gut Measure
37, the voter-approved property rights law, and another measure that would
all but eliminate Oregon�s Double Majority law, which has been approved
by voters three times already.

A federal lawsuit
has been filed to try to force the attorney general and secretary of state
to draft honest and unbiased ballot titles for those measures.

Kevin Mannix says
he too is not finished with all of his 2008 projects. Kevin has three
other measures currently circulating. One would sanction lawyers for filing
frivolous lawsuits and another would limit attorney fees in certain lawsuits,
allowing victims to receive a larger share of money awarded. Interestingly,
Kevin Mannix himself is an attorney.

Another Mannix petition,
which would dedicate a percentage of lottery funds to crime fighting programs,
is still on the streets, but is nearing completion.

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I am still considering
two or three additional measures for 2008. I am still trying to raise
funds for a measure that starts phasing out property taxes for seniors
when they turn age 65. Another abolishes the requirement that property
owners earn $80,000 in farm income for two years before being allowed
to build a house on their farmland. That measure also requires that owners
of any parcel of farm or forest property be allowed to build one or two
houses on their land, if others with the same zoning in the same county
have been allowed to build one or two houses.

Signatures for the
next General Election are due in July of 2008, so there is still time
to start new projects.

Some assumed the
conservative initiative movement would die down after so many conservative
measures went down in flames in 2006. However, the opposite seems to be
the case. I was quoted in a recent widely published Associated Press (AP)
new story as saying that the 2006 election losses for conservatives was
like one of those fluke, sneaker waves at the beach and that I expect
the 2008 election to be as good for conservatives as 2006 was bad. Either
way, it is important to continue taking the fight to the enemy.

One thing that strikes
me as particularly interesting of late is the lack of news coverage about
all of these measures in The Oregonian. The O so far has refused to even
mention the fact that I submitted signatures for several measures a year
ahead of the deadline. Normally, that would be front page news.

The truth is, I know
why they are remaining silent regarding my new projects. The Oregonian
has adopted a policy of not mentioning me unless it is something bad.
The top brass at the paper have concluded that they made a mistake in
giving me so much news coverage in past years. They decided at one of
their �head honcho powwows� a couple of years ago that their news coverage
had made me too powerful in Oregon. They adopted a new approach to dealing
with me. They decided that they will only print bad stuff about me, and
if I do anything good or noteworthy, they will simply ignore it. It�s
kind of funny. It�s like whistling past the graveyard.

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I won�t say at this
time how I know these things, but I will say this: I am not merely speculating
and I know more than I am saying.

Bill Sizemore is a registered Independent who
works as executive director of the Oregon Taxpayers Union, a statewide
taxpayer organization. Bill was the Republican candidate for governor
in 1998. He and his wife Cindy have four children, ages eight to thirteen,
and live on 36 acres in Beavercreek, just southeast of Oregon City, Oregon.

Bill Sizemore is considered one of the foremost experts on the initiative
process in the nation, having placed dozens of measures on the statewide
ballot. Bill was raised in the logging communities of the Olympic Peninsula
of Washington state, and moved to Portland in 1972. He is a graduate of
Portland Bible College, where he taught for two years. A regular contributing
writer to www.NewsWithViews.com.

The
truth is, I know why they are remaining silent regarding my new projects.
The Oregonian has adopted a policy of not mentioning me unless it is something
bad. The top brass at the paper have concluded that they made a mistake
in giving me so much news coverage in past years.